How to Tile a Shower Wall...the Mixing Valve Wall -- by Home Repair Tutor

Oh, the

tile

s are heavy! I'll just tell you that. So today we're going to show you how to

tile

your

shower

wall

, specifically the

shower

wall

that has the

mixing

valve

. I can't tell you how many questions I get about how to cut holes in tile and how to start the tiling process. Well, today we will go over those questions. You will get a lot of answers. We will show you how to cut tile using specific tools that are quite affordable but get the job done. And my friend, Steve White, who is a master bathroom remodeler, will walk you through it step by step.

So in the end we are going to demystify this process. You will feel much more comfortable tiling your shower wall. And if you have questions, we'll be happy to answer them. Let's dive into the video

tutor

ial right now. Okay, now we're going to start with what you would call the most difficult wall, the plumbing wall. And what you basically want to do is have the drywall continue into this bathroom. Basically, you just want each side to be even. So we have our limitations here because this is the corner of the back wall of our bathroom. So 31”.

You only want to mark more than 31 because you want to make sure that when you remove the shower curtain, everything is even on each side. So 31” will dictate where our final mark will be. And what we're going to use is just some Schluter metal edging similar to the one we used around the niche. Put it in place at that 31 mark. We'll just mark that 31. I think the Schluter edge is, yeah, half an inch. So, half an inch from that mark will be the edge of our tile. Okay, now I have my laser on, which makes it really simple.

If you don't have a laser, obviously you just use a level and make a mark on the wall. What I usually like to do is lay all my tiles and then slide this Schluter edge on after I have the tiles in place. It just makes it easier to align the tiles without having this metal transition already in place. So first we're going to make the mosaic and then we can slide it behind the adhesive. We are 31.” I have my laser up to the top of this tile. So let's just measure the bottom of the tub with a 1/16” gap and see what the measurement is.

What I usually like to try to do with these larger tiles is make each tile look like it's folded around the corner. So that's a whole mosaic. This is 18” from here to here. So basically we need another 6” to make it a full 24”. But I'm actually just going to go out a full tile to the edge of where my tile was going to be at 30 ½”. They are basically about 6 ½”. So that works pretty well. So we'll start all of our full tiles by cutting in half on our level line like this, and just measure what we need on each tile as we go.

So let's go ahead and measure our first tile here. We have 7 5/8 heavy, 7 5/8 heavy. So we'll cut it out and then make a hole for the beak. Okay, so we'll measure to the edge from the center of our drain. So we got 17 ¾” to the center of our pipe. And we only want to measure our laser to the center of the pipe, and that's 5”. Now we have a lot of wiggle room around this pipe because most bathtub spouts are about 2” in diameter. So with a one-inch hole saw that we're going to use, it doesn't have to be exactly half an inch.

In fact, you can make it much larger than necessary and still be able to cover everything with the tub spout. I would say probably what the pros use (I mean of course every tool costs money) is a Bosch hole saw system. And it basically has its own drill adapter that fits every size hole saw. This is a 1 3/8” hole saw. They sell them in every size you can imagine, up to 3”, 4”. But this is a rather expensive way. If you are doing a lot of tile work or have many, many holes to drill, I would say this is the best way to do it because it is more precise.

The way it works is basically you just use a regular tile drill bit. You get a pilot hole. You simply drill holes into the surface of the tile. You can go all the way if you want. But this only allows you to use the pilot bit to fit and stay in place. So it's very precise. I'm going to drill this one. I'll drill a second one with a cheaper version. So once you've cut some things up, just put some water on them to keep them cold. If you keep it a little cold, it will last a little longer.

Once you get it too hot, it starts to take off all the diamond finish that it's actually cutting. That makes a very nice, precise cut where you want it to be. So I will cut another piece to show a cheaper version that is all one piece. They typically cost between $12 and $15, depending on the size of the hole. If you're using porcelain, you'll probably only get five holes in it if you keep this blade cool enough. That other one can probably make about 50 holes in good porcelain. These cheaper little ones don't last as long, but they work and are a fifth of the price.

The other problem with this is that there is no boot. There is nothing that will get you this to make it completely even. They make some kits that have like a little suction cup plate that allows you to put it in the center and keep the bit there. But many of these cheaper, this is what you get. There is nothing holding it in place. There is nothing that can make you focus on the mosaic. So basically the way you start is you guess where the center of this part is going to be and you kind of tilt it.

So you dig into the side and tilt it up. And then once you have a groove around it, you can drill straight through. It still does the job. It might be a little problematic to start centering it. And one frustrating thing that can be sometimes is that if you don't have good control over this and you start on the side, it could just travel and then scrape the tile and then cut another piece and finish it completely. It's a little harder to center this. So for a ½” pipe, I would only use a 1” hole saw. Leave a ¾” space all around so you don't have issues with the accuracy of where you are drilling.

So it works pretty well there. I'll go ahead and fix this instead. In fact, I'm going to take this tile out and redo it because since we're going to extend this tile beyond the tub, what I want to do is instead of having to grout the joint right next to the tub, I'm going to De Done, cut the entire tile and create a small L-notch in the tile so that the grout joint is not here. This looks good, not terrible, but I think it will look more professional if you use a full tile on the outside of the tub.

So we're going to create that L notch and then drill the hole again. So again on this short little piece, I'm going to cut off the short end first because it's very easy for it to snap completely. So you should make the smallest cut first. This is how Steve uses a metal grinder, but he uses a wheel guard. Just trimming that and the rest of the piece around the corners here. So I'm just adjusting this for my laser. So I actually have a 1/8” gap between here, and that's acceptable. Okay, so let's go to 6 7/8”. Throughout the video, Steve uses these blue sewing clips.

They are called custom sewing clips. They are compressed together forming mosaics. They are incredible. He is also using 1/16” horseshoe wedges to space the slabs. Okay, so from here we will make half a tile, which would be 11 7/8”. Okay, so our next piece... you always want to do the cut edges towards the Schluter edge because you want to be able to have a factory tile edge as a seam inside the shower. So when you cut this, always place the cut edges against the Schluter edge. And when it comes to cornering, I don't really leave any gaps. I try to keep this as tight as possible.

It just looks better. And really, you're just going to seal off that corner so you don't necessarily need a gap there. And you'll probably end up having 1/16” or something like that. Let's say anything up to 1/16” or a little larger than that is fine. I think once you start getting to 1/8” spaces, it starts to look bad. And then if you were to caulk this, you would have to put a very large caulk joint in that corner. So if you stay at 1/16” or less, that usually looks better. So we'll place this one, it'll measure and then take the center of our...

Okay, so we have 18 ¾” and 18 7/8” of the actual tile. So let's make those 18 5/8" and 18 ¾" to keep that 1/16" gap there. That gap is 18 ¾”. We are going to do 18 5/8”. At the top joint there was 18 7/8”, so we are going to make it 18 ¾”. So it's just a slight cut, and I'll give it a 1/16 and 1/16” joint on the corner. So that's a little bit of a goodbye, so I'm just going to clean that up. Again, Steve is a professional, so be sure to use a wheel guard with his grinder. Okay, so we'll take the center of our

valve

, which is 5 5/8", keeping that 1/16" joint here. 5 5/8”.

And this is approximately 6 1/8” towards the center. Now, the Schluter membrane is designed so that the tile touches that, so you don't want the tile to protrude around this rubber gasket. And that's what it's for. They are about 4 ½”. 4 ½” is 2 ¾” towards the center. They now have hole saws this size. In fact, I don't even wear one that big. I have 3”, but not 4”. They get quite expensive when they get that big. So I'm going to use a grinder to cut this. So you typically have a good 7 to 8 inches of shield surrounding the valve. Double check your shields. But on a valve it will probably be almost 7” for the entire shield.

This way you will have plenty of space to play. The most important thing is that you have the Schluter seal here. So everything is waterproof around this and in the shield around it. As long as you have enough tile for the shield to seal against the tile, you're good to go. So you have some margin for error on this. There really isn't much trick other than trying to score this first in the pattern you want and then flipping it over a few times to get through the tile. So when you're polishing a slab like this with the grinder, definitely use protection.

Wear a respirator, protective glasses, and gloves. Steve isn't wearing gloves here. And make sure it's a well-ventilated area. Again, wheel protector. It's very important. Steve does this all the time. Then you get the first cut and you can start drilling down around it. Now this creates quite a bit of dust because this is obviously not a wet saw. I probably recommend that you go out and do this because you don't want your wife to get mad at you for leaving the whole house with this dusty mess. So it's not as pretty as a hole saw, but it works pretty well.

They are approximately 1/8” apart. But like I said, her crest plate…always take that crest plate and double check it. But the Delta ones are about 7”, so you will have a good inch of space around this tile. Then I noticed a little bit of lip on this, so I'll have to take it out again and space our clips out a bit. Here we go. Sewing clips, so I'll put another one. So let's continue with the pattern above. Okay, so the next cut is 7 1/16” and 7 1/16”. So here we are reaching our border. So let's go ahead and cut a piece of Ditra to polish this to the right level.

Now I like to cut this a little proud of the membrane so you can slide it down behind the slab and then lift it up perfectly. So you can even go down to the next area, the next square, I guess, you should say. So the way this is sitting here, I'm going to have to shorten it a little bit because it's actually leaning a little bit on the drywall, and I don't want my tile to come off. . So I'm going to cut this a little bit shorter and then I'll just thin out this, the last tile square there.

You can simply slide it down to where it doesn't interfere with the tile above it. And then just embed that. So I'm just using the back of my palette. If you have a grout trowel you can do this too, but make sure you fill all of these little squares like any Ditra installation. Well, now I like to work from the outside and work my way in to have a full piece of mosaic on the edge instead of trying to make a cut edge, especially with glass. It's really hard to get that glass to cut well. And you can hide that cut in the corner instead of on this outer edge here.

We'll use these horseshoe leggings to put this on. So I pretty much only have a ¾” cut. I'm going to put this on the wet saw and cut it. Now I always use a piece of tile to put the mosaic on because when you try to put it on the table saw it falls off. So just a piece of tile. I'm only going to remove ¾”. So you need to dry that tile before installing it. Make sure it is dry so the adhesive will adhere to the back. So it works pretty well. You can get a decent cut, butlike I said, it's much easier to start with a full piece on the outside edge.

You didn't hide any imperfect corner cuts. So this is where that non-sinking mortar really helps prevent this from pinching the edge too much. That's where these sewing clips come in really handy too, because now everything is one tile. And with that mortar that doesn't sag, it really helps keep everything in place. So combining the clips with non-sag mortar really makes this possible. Because a lot of times, before I even started using this thinner that doesn't sink, I would always have to stop for a day on this little tile, or fill it, fill a spacer here and work my way to tiling and laying the border because if If you try to do it all in the same thing, everything would just get squashed and become a mess.

So the combination of having the seam clips and having the mortar that doesn't sag (spending a little more money on that thin layer) allows you to do all of this at once. Now when you get to larger linear borders, like these little one inch tiles, they are a little more forgiving when it comes to lowering the pressure. But these little guys, it's so easy for these things to just... there's really nothing to do, so... And these spacers also make it a lot easier to make sure they don't get crushed. So it's just the little things that make life easier.

So we got 5 ¾ weight. 5¾”. So I guess the roof, I'm just trying to attach the slabs up to the roof. If you really wanted you could put a little KERDI Fix. You could even use silicone against the drywall. But once we've grouted everything, we'll apply a bead of caulk against the ceiling. You want to try to use it like silicone, basically, between the two surfaces to cut off expansion and contraction. The grout will most likely crack at that joint. But as far as sealing goes, if you want to put silicone behind you put this tile down, you can certainly do that with KERDI Fix or even just silicone.

But there really won't be much of a problem. Water will not saturate the roof. If it were, you'd have a problem with water in that drywall. So it's really no big deal. So let's try to get as close to the ceiling as possible. So 5 7/8” and 5 ¾”. The spout of our shower head here. So we go from the top of the slab basically 1 ½” while keeping that 17 ¾”. So it's very good this part here, let's use this cheaper part here. Let's do a little analysis of Schluter's transition. That's a bit of a sloppy way to do it. You should probably wear some gloves.

But just try to fill this joint and introduce the Schluter transition into it. And you can see some of the KERDI membrane here. So what we're going to have to do is use a little bit of joint compound and probably put some paper tape and go down along this edge when we go to finish the drywall. But it's nice to have that waterproofing here. Make sure everything in the shower is waterproof. Now, if this Schluter edge wasn't straight, you can always shim it behind. And then once I've finished the joint compound here, I usually try to use a latex caulk here so that there's a nice painted seam against the Schluter trim.

Alright, there you have it. This is how the mosaic is placed on the wall of a shower with a

mixing

valve. We hope we have answered many questions for you, for example: How do you start the tiling process? Do you use spacers in the bathtub? How do you cut around the mixing valve? Where does it end at the top of the tile to ceiling transition? So if you have any questions, ask them below in the comments. We will be more than happy to help you. And this is part of our bathroom remodeling workshop, where we are installing a full bathroom in my garage.

And it is intended to allow us to do this step by step and provide you with excellent, very high quality videos to address common questions and help you avoid mistakes. And while we're on that topic, you might want to watch our free video series to help you avoid common mistakes and get professional tips and tricks on how to remodel a bathroom. If you're interested in that, sign up right here. So just click here. You can sign up to receive the free video series. We think it's pretty impressive. We hope it helps you. Again, thanks for watching today's video.

If you have any questions, please ask below. We will be more than happy to help you. Take care, have a great day and see you in the next video.